one wish (m)

Directly across from my hotel room is a little church.  The bells ring on the hour every hour.  It is beautiful.

On Sunday, I decide to go to Mass.  My grandmother told me that when you go to a new church, you get to make one wish.

What should I wish for?  The top of mind selection is that Harrison win the event.  He took first place after the short program, but his US teammate usually beats him in the long program.  That is the lead candidate.

Then I think about wishing for the stamina and willpower to continue my weight loss journey.  I still have a long way to go and, as you can see, food is never far from my mind. 

Then, I think about my friend, A, who is suffering from cancer.  A has always taken good care of herself.  She lived right, drank rarely, never smoked, exercised frequently and then gets whacked by cancer.  It has been two years of MRIs (3 hours at a time, sweat dripping from her body), nauseating chemo, debilitating radiation.  She is scheduled for surgery two days after we get back from Europe.  They found more cancer and the question is whether this is a new type of cancer (very bad) or more of the same (less bad).

When you look at life and break things down into groups of things you can control and things you can't control, you see things very differently.  Harrison can control his body.  He just needs to execute what he's learned.  I can control my diet.  I just have to exercise discipline.

My friend, A, has no control over what is happening to her.  She needs divine intervention.

I pray that A's cancer is the less bad one and that they can remove most of it during her surgery.

I leave the church feeling lighter knowing I have done the right thing.

Epilogue--A has her surgery on April 6th.  Much to the doctors' surprise, the cancer is, indeed, the less bad one (preliminary testing indicated otherwise) and they remove all of it in that part of the body.